Books! Books! Books! Can't get enough of them! But a book is never fully appreciated until it is discussed- with one person, many people, or on a blog. Since I retired, I have always belonged to book clubs - one, two, three, or even four at a time. I always have an opinion about the book I am reading. It isn't always the popular opinion, but it is mine. This is what will be on my blog.

Thursday, 3 August 2017

"The Bookshop on the Corner" by Jenny Colgan

What a cheery cover! I picked up this book while travelling. I enjoy reading 'books about books'. This book has been compared to "The Little Paris Bookshop" which I wrote about here. But I realize that I really enjoy non-fiction 'books about books' more than fiction- books like "Read for Your Life" by Joseph Gold. The theme of books in a novel seems like a good thing, but doesn't necessarily make the book "a great read".Plot: Nina Redmond, 29, was a librarian in England, who lost her job because the library "was going to compress the library services into the centre of town, where they would become a "hub", with a "multimedia experience zone" and a coffee shop and an "intersensory experience". This caught my attention because I have complained about the changing concept of libraries. Check it out here. Nina decided to follow her dreams and moved to Scotland, bought a van, and filled it with books that had been discarded from the library. She would make her living selling books. A cute concept for the book but there were so many aspects that just weren't realistic. I could never visualize this van, because it had a table and chairs, shelves of books and a chandelier. At one point she mentioned "lots of families started to crowd into the van". And she drove this van from town to town. Perhaps the most unrealistic aspect was the effect on the town- "And as Nina looked around the little village in the sunshine, she couldn't help but notice something. Everyone was reading. People out in their gardens. An old lady in her wheelchair by the war memorial. A little girl absent-mindedly swinging on the swings. In the bakery, someone was laughing at a book of cartoons, at the coffee stand, the barista was trying to read and make someone cappuccino at the same time. Nina was amazed. It couldn't be- surely- that she had turned an entire town into readers. It seemed that she had". Well, not only did she perform that miracle, but she also discovered a very poor family with a disabled mother, and she completely changed their future. The title of this book in the U.K is "The Little Shop of Happy-Ever-After". Perhaps that is a better title? I do love librarians- here is a blog that I have written about unusual ones. Click here.